cleft thyself in twain
by isawet
Summary: Natasha used to be an actual black widow spider. Cue her working at being human, but liking things like pheromones and bellyrubs. Natasha/Clint.


Natasha sleeps in a hammock. It's flatter than a usual hammock, strung between two heavy posts and made of silk nylon rope. She likes to stretch out on it, wrap her fingers and toes around the cords.

"Your bed is weird," Clint says, sprawled out under her. Natasha licks at the bruises she'd left around his throat, humming. "Good thing my uniform is a high collar," he says, but he's more amused than angry. Natasha rolls off him and nuzzles her face into a junction of ropes. They smell like her and Clint, and Natasha breathes in deep. Clint settles back on top of her, only a hint of his weight, and nudges at her until she rolls over to face him. He kisses her, light and flirty, and she pushes at his shoulders until he laughs.

"Okay," he murmurs, and slides down her body until his nose is even with her pelvis. He bites at her hipbones.

"Mm," Natasha sighs, and Clint props himself up to run the flat of his palms down her ribs, around her navel and back up again.

"Weird," Clint says again, very fondly, and dips his tongue into her bellybutton.

/

"What does your bed look like," she asks Tony. They're perched on a very cold, very wet rooftop, and Natasha is mostly being bored and cold and wet while Tony uses the suit's infrared sensors to watch a Belgian arms dealer have a slice of pie and cup of coffee at the diner across the street.

"Um," Tony says. "Aren't you and Barton kind of...?"

Natasha stares at him impassively. "Kind of," she says.

Tony fidgets a little, a mechanical whirring as his weight shifts from one foot to the other. "It's nice?" he offers. "Pepper orders these expensive sheets." He holds his index finger close to his thumb. "Weird little pillows."

"Hm," Natasha says.

"Good talk," Tony says.

/

Clint pushes Natasha up against the wall of her room, his teeth on her jaw, and she smiles, arching her back up and pressing their hips together. He hisses, and then undulates against her, the hard wall against her back. Natasha walks them to her hammock and Clint sits on the edge.

"Hey," he says, blinking. "You got sheets."

"Yes," Natasha says, pleased. She swings her leg up and straddles him, kisses him as he lies back with his hands on her waist. She dips her fingers under his waistband. "Is it less weird now?"

Clint's eyes are little glazed. "I-what? Come here," he drags her shirt up over her head and Natasha falls into him, grinding down and enjoying the way his mouth goes slack with every roll of her hips.

/

Natasha hates the med lab. It's white and bright and the instruments make loud metallic clatters on each other. "It smells like bleach," Natasha tells Clint, "bleach and insect repellant and chemicals. I'm going to my room."

"Fine," Clint says, because he knows her, knows she'd rather drag her bleeding disemboweled body down the hall to her room rather than spend the night on a stainless steel bed with wheels on the ends.

"Thanks," Natasha says, blinking sleepily through painkillers and the faint thumping ache in her side. Clint offers her an arm and helps her to her room. Natasha catches sight of her little bed and feels better-until Clint is easing her down onto it.

"What's wrong?"

Natasha wrenches her arm away. "What did you do to the sheets?"

Clint blinks at her. "I washed them-did it while they were stitching you up and checking you out."

Natasha feels her face scrunch up. "I don't like it." She shoves the sheets over to the floor and lies down. She presses her cheek against one of the knots and winces as the stitches in her side pulls.

"Ookay," Clint mutters, kicking the sheets into a rough pile by the door. He presses a hand to her forehead, checks her pulse. He smoothes a curl of her hair out of her face. "Took a couple years off my life, Tasha."

Natasha doesn't like the way thinking about that makes her chest feel tight. "Don't say that." The hammock creaks when Clint sits on the edge. Natasha dozes, feeling him lift the edge of her shirt up and checking the edges of the medical tape. His fingers are light, and slightly cool, skimming up and down her ribs. He presses a soft kiss to her temple, and heads for the door.

"Natasha Romanov," he murmurs from the doorway, as she loses the fight against consciousness "the spider in her web."

Natasha snaps awake twenty minutes later, tense, adrenaline flooding her senses and clearing the fog of sedatives from her mind. She stays still, fighting her fight or flight response, trying to figure out how he figured out, how he knew. Her breath is coming very fast. She wonders if he'll ask her to leave the team. She curses herself for taking the vicodin and letting herself get drowsy and out of it.

She's interrupted by the door opening again. "Hey," Clint says, and crosses the room quickly. He's in sweats, shirtless, and his hair is damp.

Natasha blinks at him, her mind working furiously. "Hey."

"I went to shower," he says, easing down behind her. He pulls her back against him, spooning her close. He palms the almost nonexistent curve to her belly. "didn't want to smell like the hospital."

Natasha takes a deep breath and smells Clint, the drops of water dripping down the back of his neck, hints of his bodywash, crispness of his deodorant.

_Natasha Romanov in her web_, she thinks, and stretches out against Clint before relaxing, his breath warm on her shoulder and his heartbeat thumping through her back.


End file.
